Postal stamps may seem rather quaint today. People would rather text or email rather than send a letter. Despite that, stamps were and still are a powerful declaration of independence. When a country puts out a stamp and its own currency, it tells the world that the people are a nation under their own government. The numerous examples that exist in the world of philately are a big part of what keeps my attention to this hobby. Here’s the tale of Latvia’s first stamp.

The history of eastern Europe is a bit of a tangly mess with one group taking over another’s lands only to be taken over by someone else. Then again, that seems to be the case for most of the world’s history. But Eastern Europe’s history always seemed a bit cloudy which I’m guessing is due in large part to the decades of tensions between east and west.

The region that we know of today as Latvia has been under various occupiers including, the Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, and Germans. I’ll have to leave the full history of the area to the historians as I’ve been running into some confusion here but, we do know that it was Germany who had occupied Latvian territory during World War I. During this period, any mail posted in Latvia were German stamps overprinted with: Ober Ost – Oberbefehlshaber der gesamten Deutschen Streitkräfte im Osten (translates to “Supreme Commander of All German Forces in the East”. Overprinted stamps are a common thing in philately often during periods of great change. This is another area of stamp collecting that I find incredibly fascinating.

When the Germans fled the area at the end of World War I, they left the region in ruin. A strong sense of nationalism had already been spreading through Eastern Europe and the people who had been calling themselves Lativans for centuries finally had the opportunity to make their own country with their own government. On November 18, 1918, the country of Latvia declared independence with its capital being the city of Riga. As stated earlier, what is one of the things a country does to show the world its independence? Yes, the Latvian government commissioned its first postal stamps.

The first Latvian postal stamps were designed by Ansis Circlis (1883-1942) who was also the designer of the new Latvian flag. Circlis had a vision of what Latvia’s coat of arms should look like and that was the image used on these first stamps. Printing house, Schnakenburg in Riga was selected to print these first stamps. There was only one problem: paper. Supplies of everything were in short supply around Latvia including paper. But the printing house had a great idea. They had stacks of maps of the region that the Germans demanded that they print. Obviously, the army wasn’t going to need them anymore so workers printed their country’s first stamps on the back of WWI maps. An adhesive was slapped on the map side and the stamps were cut either straight or with perforations. On December 18, 1918, these stamps were officially issued to the people.

(I did find mention on German stamps being overprinted with “LIBAU” in 1919 for use by Latvia but it seems that there was no proof that these were actually used.)

I wish this story had a happy ending however, the first Latvian stamp/German map story has a rather abrupt end as the stamp only survived for 14 days. On January 2, 1919, the Latvian government was evacuated from Riga, and the following day, Latvian Soviets invaded and took over the country. In June of 1940, the Soviet Union officially occupied. Latvia would not gain full independence again until August 21, 1991.

On December 18, 2018, the Lativan post office issued a 100th anniversary of their first stamp. The first day cover shows the image of one of these WWI maps in the background.

Sources:

• https://philatelist.home.blog/2019/05/12/latvias-map-stamps-of-1918/
• https://www.stamp-collecting-world.com/latvianstamps_1918.html
• https://www.wopa-plus.com/en/stamps/product/&pgid=51007#:~:text=The%20first%20stamp%20of%20the,of%20the%20German%20Empire’s%20army.